Category Archives: Recipes

Announcing: “Grow Your Own” #39

Update 6 March 2010: The “Grow Your Own” roundup for this month is now online: https://www.houseofannie.com/your-own-roundup-39/ .

I’d like to thank all the participants of last month’s “Grow Your Own” roundup for making it such a successful event.  60+ participants is a huge number, for any kind of roundup!  This proves that such a little thing as Winter can’t stop many of you from cooking with homegrown or foraged ingredients.  And for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, you are just now getting to the peak of your Summer harvest season.
So I’m sure that you are making even more dishes using homegrown ingredients.  When you post about these dishes, be sure to enter your post in our next roundup!  The rules are simple:
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Grow Your Own roundup #38

This may be the highest number of participants in “Grow Your Own” history!

summer bounty

This edition of GYO features 61 different dishes from 8 different countries. The “Grow Your Own” food blog roundup, created by Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes, features dishes using ingredients which have been raised in our own (or someone else’s) gardens or have been hunted or foraged. Why grow your own? Because it saves money and makes for better tasting food!

I am in awe of the variety of great food that’s being made in what is Winter for a majority of food bloggers out there. I’m also very thankful for the participants from Australia for showing off their homegrown produce. Check out the entire roundup below. Entries are posted in the order they were received.

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Black Bean Chicken and Bell Peppers Stir-fry

Loving bell peppers is easy when stir-fried with chicken and black bean sauce.

Black Bean Chicken and Bell Peppers 1

When I was younger, there were certain vegetables that I didn’t care for—bittermelon, celery, watercress and bell peppers (specifically green bell peppers). These vegetables tasted bad to me except for watercress (that one I just didn’t like because it was so stringy—we mainly had it in soups and I could never chew it enough to swallow it).

When I met Nate, he had his own food dislikes but they didn’t match mine. I was incredulous that he didn’t like mayonnaise, bananas, and asparagus. Those were all things that I loved. So it didn’t come as too much of a surprise to me that the things he loved, I didn’t – especially bell peppers. And this particular dish of stir-fried chicken with bell peppers in black bean sauce is one of his favorites.

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Indonesian Chicken and Pork Satay (Sate Ayam dan Babi)

Sweet marinated meat, skewered and char-grilled for that irresistible, flame-kissed, smoky flavor.

Indonesian Chicken and Pork Satay

Indonesian Pork and Chicken Satay 2

If you recall I have had many wonderful eating experiences stemming from that International Dorm in Hawaii (Niku-Jaga, Chicken Pho, Thai Son-in-Law Eggs, Indonesian-inspired Sauteed Shrimp). But for this particular recipe, my memories are not based in the dorm. Yes, the Indonesian friends who made them were from that dorm but we had taken the satay and hibachi (portable grill) and had gone to cook them at the park by the beach. Hawaii does that to you—it makes you want to go out to the beach as often as you can!

So imagine with me, if you can, the cool tradewind breezes, and in the background, the sound of Hawaiian music playing on somebody’s boombox, the blue ocean beckoning a slight distance away, the wide, expansive park next to the beach and us sitting under a shady tree with our hibachi going. Now that you have that setting in your mind, imagine any food not tasting just wonderful. But this was satay, it wasn’t just any food, it was GOOD food.

Continue reading Indonesian Chicken and Pork Satay (Sate Ayam dan Babi)